An unassuming but attractive brick church of the 1950s, in the Romanesque basilican manner.

The Cedars housing estate off Headstone Lane began to be laid out by the London County Council in 1945.  Before the present church was built, local Catholics attended Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Convent (now Sequoia Park). The Diocese of Westminster purchased a site for a new church in 1951 and a new church was opened and the boundary of its new parish fixed in 1953.

In the 1970s parish rooms and a kitchen were formed at the west end of the church, the latter in the former baptistery. The church was further reordered (altar rails removed) and redecorated in the 1990s.

Description

The church is a simple Romanesque style.  The external walls are faced with yellow stock brick, the roof is covered in Roman tiles. The church is conventionally orientated and the plan comprises a long nave under a shallow-pitched roof with narrow passage aisles under pent roofs and a short square-ended sanctuary.  The east end of the church is linked to the contemporary presbytery by a single storey sacristy. The west front has a large rose window under a giant arch of three unmoulded brick orders and with an elaborate brick corbel table. The north elevation to the road has three round headed doors at the west end of the aisle. Eastward of the doors the aisle has small paired windows, with seven round-headed windows in the nave clerestory above.  The south elevation is not visible. The sanctuary is lower than the nave and has two small high side windows.

The interior is simple and effective, with plain plastered walls, a deep west organ gallery now glazed beneath to form a parish room, and north and south arcades of low unmoulded round arches on short concrete columns. Smaller arches span across the passage aisles. The nave has an open timber scissor-braced roof. In the east wall of the nave is a round arch to the apsidal sanctuary, lit by two small windows high on each side.  The fittings are simple and the building is clear glazed throughout.

Heritage Details